By William Lindsay and Zanh Liis
100307.22
Concurrent with The Case of the Commandeered Cruiser
-=/\=-
"Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win."
~Stephen King
-=/\=-
100307.22
Concurrent with The Case of the Commandeered Cruiser
-=/\=-
"Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win."
~Stephen King
-=/\=-
-=USS Poseidon=-
After one last smug glance across what he saw as his new domain, Tucker Brody strode confidently once more from the bridge. He wanted privacy to ask the questions that he had for their ad-hoc Chief of Security, which he’d quite quickly decided would not be Mitchell, and so he waited until the lift doors had closed to hail the man.
"Deck four." He instructed the lift and then halted it before tapping his badge.
"Brody to Wilson,” he continued, sounding pleased with himself. “How are our guests?"
[The gentlemen are still unconscious in their holding cell and the lady,] the man laughed, nearly choking on the noun used as adjective when so many others would have much more accurately applied to Zanh Liis, […woke up just as we were trying to obtain the items from her person that you requested.]
He’d quite clearly answered as cryptically as he could, unsure if Brody was alone.
"You can speak freely,” Brody assured him, picking up on his concerns. Brody also observed that the man was concerned about more than just the possibility that someone else may be listening. “Zanh put up a fight?"
[She broke Geller's nose, sir,] the man replied cautiously, sounding as if he was wincing at the thought. [Geller responded by...overreacting.]
"What do you mean, 'overreacting'?" Brody frowned, his tone switching to match. "I told you that no physical harm was to come to her."
The other man’s voice became unsteady, reflecting his nervousness. [Geller ended up breaking Zanh's jaw in the altercation before I could stop her, sir. Despite that fact, Zanh got in a few more good licks before we subdued her and now she's sedated again. Geller is getting her face reassembled.]
"Have a full medkit waiting for me so I can repair the damage to Zanh's jaw immediately,” Brody insisted quickly. “Damn it, I told you that she was only to be restrained or sedated!"
He was very and unusually angry. Other men’s failures were theirs to carry alone. A man who chose to enter the lion’s den and moved too slowly deserved no sympathy and warranted no further consideration. When however those failures impacted upon his own life and threatened to pull down upon his most beautifully elegant plans, that was when he got mad.
For the plan he had in mind to have maximum believability, Zanh couldn't show signs of outward injury. Now he'd have to make up a story to explain it if she questioned it. He felt no doubt that he could easily create something that would be entirely reasonable. However he hated making up stories any more than was absolutely necessary to accomplish his ends. The lies may wound but the truth was that ever-vital salt needed to inflict the most pain.
"You've made a mess of this. Geller too,” Brody growled, sternly warning, “there will be repercussions."
[Sorry, sir,] the man said in that sincere but emotionless tone that conveyed he expected no quick absolution. [What do you want us to do with her now?]
There was only a momentary pause for thought as Brody adjusted quickly to the new situation. His plans adapted to suit and with no practical purpose for it anymore the anger was replaced with what was an almost indescribably more threatening calm.
"You have the items in your possession now?"
[Yes sir.] The man replied in as few words as he possibly could, clearly eager to close the channel lest Brody should discover another failure of his and begin to question his usefulness, which allowed the conversation to conclude quite efficiently.
"And you said that the Captain is unconscious?"
[Aye sir.]
"Then carry out the rest of the instructions I gave you. Move her, and keep her sedated until I get there and am ready to wake her up myself."
[Understood.]
Satisfied that things were back on track Brody closed the channel without further comment.
He then requested the lift to resume. Only now did he show any hint of the real frustration he felt about the wastes of time which were the people around him.
Bowing his head slightly he closed his eyes as he pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. It was so difficult to accomplish anything great with so many weaker links in the chain of command. Still, he was almost there, if he could do this, if he could finish it all off once and for all, maybe he'd finally find some peace and move on.
He exhaled slowly as he considered some truths that only he knew. He'd been right about her all along, he was certain of that. He'd been right and everyone else had been wrong and now was when he was going to show them all. A small smile came to his lips about that fact, though it disappeared quickly before he stepped from the lift to where someone else might have seen.
-=^=-
While Brody found himself thinking quickly Keiran O'Sullivan found he was doing quite the opposite. His head was groggy like that of a man after a night spent far too long with a bottle. He groaned at the thought as he tried to piece together sparse memories of what had happened.
He felt so strange-- off kilter somehow. As much as he struggled to make it be sensible the clearer the picture in his mind became of his last memories the more he wished he was looking at another one. He had a feeling that when he opened his eyes he wouldn't be where he'd been before let alone find himself anywhere he could actually ever want to go.
He slowly and carefully opened one eye just a crack, and in doing so he groaned more loudly. He was in a cell. It was clearly Starfleet in design but it was more familiar even than that- in a sickening, heart sinking way.
It had Temporal Investigations written all over it.
He immediately bolted upright, remembering that he'd been with two other people before he'd come here and suddenly desperate to know their fate.
"Liis?" Frantic blue eyes scanned the cell, yet his wife was nowhere to be found. He looked across the small space and immediately saw that his other companion and former Jump partner was present and accounted for. He was however not moving.
"William! For the love of God, brother, wake up!" Keiran reached both hands out and jarred Will with them until to his great relief the man startled.
"Keiran," Will uttered a groan nearly identical to the one Keiran had given moments before as he cautiously tested the sensitivity of his eyes to the light that would surely greet them when he opened them. "Where the hell are we?"
"We're in a hell of a lot of trouble 's where we are, and at the moment I have'ta think that's your doin’."
"Now just a-“ Will started, before with eyes fully open a worried thought occurred. “Wait." He jumped up and spun looking in a complete circle around, fearful but desperate to confirm his suspicions. "Where’s Liis?"
"Don' know." Keiran replied sadly and with deep concern. He was picturing her alone and imprisoned in a cell such as this as his right hand immediately moved toward his left. When it reached out for the object he had been seeking however, his eyes widened with horror. He glanced down at his hand and as he'd feared it was true; his ring was gone.
This was much worse than her just being trapped in some cell away from him.
"God, no. Liis," Keiran declared as immediately he recalled the stories that Liis had told him about the experiences she'd had with Brody in the paradox. Now he felt physically ill.
"What is it?" Will asked, feeling unnaturally nervous himself and especially so seeing the worry in Keiran’s face.
"Brody's got her,” Keiran said simply and without a doubt in his mind. “I know it."
-=^=-
Brody reached out to the still smarting Lieutenant Stacey Geller, handing her a bundle of simple clothing and making no mention of her failure as he felt the disgust in his eyes for her blackened face could say it all.
"Take this outfit. Go in there, and put it on Captain Zanh in place of her current attire. Do. Not. Harm. Her," he commanded, speaking the words very slowly so as to make them perfectly clear and easy for even someone of her exceedingly limited intellect to understand.
"Yes sir." Geller blanched, hoping sincerely that before this was over something, anything, would happen that would take Brody down a peg or ten, but fearing to even let the thought linger in her mind lest he see it there. He'd been different when all this began, or at least he had been to her. He’d had a certain quiet charisma that at first made him seem like a charming gentleman but which given time came to seem more like that of a cult leader guiding his devoted followers to the deaths. Geller was no follower now.
Now, she hated him more than she had any of the officers that they had pledged to bring down together.
As she went about her task, Brody paced the hallway with an eager dignity. He had waited such a long time for this. He had waited, planned, and so carefully considered every word he'd say, every intonation he'd use. Now that the moment was finally here, he could hardly believe it was real. So he centred himself carefully now as if to not only confirm it was in fact reality but to make sure nothing went wrong as could so often happen in his nightmares.
A few moments passed and Geller returned with the civilian clothing Zanh had been wearing, right down to the boots just as she'd been instructed.
"Where should I put these, sir?" She raised the items slightly in her hands as if to indicate that they were that of which she spoke and Brody felt disgusted that she should think he’d need them pointed out to him.
With a swift and impatient wave of his hand he dismissed her. "In a storage locker, I don't care. Anywhere they're out of the way."
"Aye, Sir."
"And Geller, see to it that we are not disturbed." Brody spoke what was a very clear and detailed warning as he reached into his pocket and withdrew a pair of glasses; the thinnest possible of gold metal frames encircling tiny round lenses.
He regarded them for a long moment, studying them almost as though they were purely a curiosity: some sort of souvenir or sentimental keepsake. As if they were something that belonged to someone that he once known, rather than being his own. Finally he raised his eyes to her again, silently questioning why she was still standing before him. “Move.”
Geller couldn't help but feel a shiver run up and down her spine at the look in his eyes and tone of his voice. "Aye, sir."
She retreated as quickly as possible down the hall, not looking back, though she could feel Brody’s eyes, still steadily fixed upon her as she moved away.
Satisfied that he was now alone, Brody savoured the final moments of his preparation.
After positioning his glasses low on the bridge of his nose, he donned a blue Starfleet Medical lab coat that he had replicated along with the outfit he'd asked Geller to put on Zanh. He then smiled at and picked up the medkit that leaned against the nearby wall, grasping the handle tightly with one hand while the other removed a data chip from his pants pocket. With a slight gasp of enjoyment at what he was about to recreate he plugged it into the panel before him.
^Access to this holosuite is restricted.^ The computer informed. ^Please enter authorization code.^
Deliberately and slowly Brody entered the code manually instead of speaking it aloud; something that he'd learned to do over the years in environments where he was certain that not only did the walls have eyes but ears as well. He entered the long and complicated code very carefully, pausing and turning halfway through to be sure that no one had turned the security cameras he'd disabled previously back on.
^Authorization accepted.^ The computer responded with a formal indifference that only an unfeeling automation could display at a time like this. Any feeling being with the ability to know right from wrong would have reveled with him for at least a moment in the resounding, overriding justice of the beautiful revenge he was about to take. ^Program complete. You may enter when ready.^
With that the door was opened and Brody inhaled a deep breath as he took those first thrilling steps into the suite. The reproduction was astonishing in its detail even to him, though he had created it.
It was all here, every last detail. From the drab uneven tone of the tiny, windowless room down to the perfectly replicated scratch marks in the walls and the door where she had dug her nails until they bled into their beds trying to claw her way out of her nightmare. He’d even counted and reproduced exactly the dents and dings in the metal bed frame from the times she had rammed it into the wall again and again trying to get his attention.
Everything was in place at last, including Zanh Liis who now lay in a heap on the floor at his feet.
Other than the pallor that had been caused by the drugs used to sedate her and the swollen, ragged line of bruising across the left side of her jaw from her scuffle with Geller, he hated to admit to himself that she looked better, healthier physically, then he could ever remember having seen her.
Marriage to O'Sullivan obviously agreed with her.
It was a shame, really, that not everyone got to be as happy as they had been.
Had been.
Those two words played again and again in his mind with a satisfying resonance.
As he knelt beside her and set about the task of repairing her broken jaw, his thoughts drifted to the snapshots that had made the rounds among those of the upper echelon at TI after the fabled Zanh/O'Sullivan wedding in Ireland. He remembered the glowing face of the bride, the touching emotions clearly displayed in the eyes of her adoring groom.
They would never know such happiness again, he thought. Still they were luckier than most at TI. Most never got the chance to know it at all.
When he was through with them, specifically with Zanh Liis, that life would seem as impossible a fairy tale as any joyful dream she had ever imagined.
He would trap her here, in this life where she had no power or joy and she would accept this reality as the nightmare from which she could never again wake.
If he did this correctly, she would in time believe she had never for a moment escaped it at all.
After the fracture was mended-- the one positive thing he would do for her health-- he circled her; sizing her up once again and wondering just how she would react in that incredible moment when she opened her eyes and saw where she was.
He knew that it was dangerous, coming in here on his own, but Brody always worked alone. Alone everything was so much cleaner. Alone there were no witnesses to his methods; methods which would if nothing else certainly earn him the suspension of his license to practice any form of the healing arts.
Perhaps such things were a moot point now given this power they held but Brody knew from experience just what priceless benefits the title of ‘doctor’ could gain you.
Ever cautious even still, he considered the challenge ahead and steeled himself against it. His will was strong. He was ready for whatever she could throw at him.
Now he moved toward her again, speaking her name softly once to be certain that she was still out cold. He wanted her first sighting of this room to be shocking- to happen all in an instant as she startled to a state of hyper-vigilance that far exceeded anything that could be called simple alertness.
He looked the room over once more, feeling so at home here, then retrieved the hypospray from his pocket.
This was a perfect reproduction of the room she had once inhabited, in another time, at Starfleet Medical. The injection that he would soon administer was in appearance similarly like a reproduction of one that Brody, that is to say that other foolish man, had placed upon this same neck before.
He nodded to himself, satisfied as he transferred the hypospray to his other hand. He then reached into his pocket and felt three rings there; two belonged to Zanh and must remain there. The other was the one he was seeking, and he withdrew it and clutched it in his tightening hand.
Finally he knelt down beside her again. He adjusted the settings on the hypospray, amping up the dose of medication meant to bring her around to levels that would instantly initiate a state of full-blown physical and emotional panic.
He applied it to her skin and then felt a rush of satisfaction that it was working as she groaned and he pasted on the sweetest of his smiles.
"Liis? Liis, are ya'lright?" he drawled softly, trying to sound as kind and gentle as he once had been as a young man who’d known no better.
The effect of the medication was truly remarkable as Liis abruptly startled ; her eyes bloodshot and filled with terror as they found his smiling face.
"No." she insisted. That single word was her only hoarse, quiet denial; the dryness in her throat making it nearly impossible to say. Her jaw throbbed the moment she tried to speak, but she couldn't remember what had happened to make it so sore. Her hand instinctively touched the bruised flesh of her face and she winced. "No."
She attempted to rise to her feet and stumbled, with her mind telling her to run far faster than her body would allow. Tucker offered her a hand but to his inner amusement she viciously pushed it away. "Don't." She recoiled, hissing at him like an animal thanks to the adrenalin coursing through her veins. "Don't you dare touch me.”
"I'm only tryin' to help, Zanh Liis,” Brody said calmly. “All I've ever done was try to help you."
She seemed determined, almost desperate to ignore him and spoke to herself alone now with vacant eyes fixed upon the image of the imprisoning door in the distance. "This isn't right," she quickly forced the words out through painfully tightened lips as she shook her head back and forth.
Almost as if feeling it’d give her more room she pressed her back up into the corner, where the walls behind her met in a space which felt as if it was closing in all around her.
She knew she couldn’t run which drew every instinct instead to thoughts of fighting but if this wasn’t real, then she didn’t know with whom. Her glassy eyes finally darted around the room; taking in the metal cot, the thin blanket on the bed, and a thousand other horrifying details. Everything was wrong but everything was right, with not a single item out of place to show that they’d failed in their illusion.
Her hands began to move desperately along the wall behind her, feeling the texture in search of a single incorrectly recreated or uneven spot. All she’d need was a single mistake, something to hang the threads of her rapidly unraveling sanity upon.
She looked down at herself and saw that she was wearing the thin uniform of an inpatient, made of fabric just as flimsy as the sheets though the color was a muddied, sickening shade of blue and not the dingy gray of the bedding. Regardless the color the cloth was just as useless for making a person feel warm in this room that seemed so cold she expected to see her breath billowing in plumes of steam in the air as she spoke.
It was just as it had been back then.
"This isn't real," she promised herself softly, her breathing beginning to get heavier.
"What isn't real, Zanh Liis?" Brody asked with the quiet curiosity of a man trying to comprehend a sad delusion.
"This...place." She stayed against the wall but raised her arms and wrapped them around herself as she began to tremble. "I'm not supposed to be here. I know who I am."
"Where are you supposed to be?" Brody asked, with obvious false confusion and humour as if talking to a small child who’d just said they weren’t supposed to be going to school today and genuinely thought they’d get away with it.
"I know who I am." She repeated the words again in desperation, like she was afraid that as soon as she stopped saying them they’d cease to be true or worse, be forgotten forever. "Don't listen to him,” she said to herself. “This isn't real."
Brody slowly sighed as if exasperated that Liis still didn’t believe him.
"I am very real, I assure you. Here." He held his hand out toward her invitingly, and Zanh remained exactly where she was, looking upon it like she was watching a deadly snake slithering towards her.
She couldn’t help but be paralyzed by the true fear she felt in this moment. She knew she wasn’t trusting in her own thoughts: that all her protestations weren’t being believed and were only growing weaker. Without even thinking she sought out an item that could in times give her strength and that was when she really began to panic.
Her heart felt as if it might beat out of her chest as she thought suddenly to look down at her hands- and found them missing the jewelry she had expected to find there.
No, she couldn’t accept this. This was a game, a trick, nothing more than a fancy interrogation and she’d have to treat it as such if she was going to make it out of here and back to her reality; back to her husband.
"Name: Zanh Liis O'Sullivan." She loudly droned, staring straight ahead as if neither acknowledging nor ignoring Brody. "Starfleet serial number zero seven one one nine zero five. Rank: Captain. Command: USS Serendipity NCC two zero one two."
Brody’s face so perfectly conveyed the sympathy that wasn’t there.
"Zanh Liis, you are not helping yourself by persisting in this delusion that you have a command. That you are..."
"Marital Status," Liis continued reciting from her official file, information that she felt must be true but still in this moment was so horrifyingly doubting could be. "Married; to Captain Keiran Riley O'Sullivan, Stardate eight one zero two six."
"Zanh Liis, now ya know that's just not true." He lowered eyes that appeared to be brimming with compassion as if he really hated to have to confront her with the truth. "You know that Keiran perished in the aftermath of the cascade."
"NAME!" Liis began again, shouting the word in defiance. She trembled ferociously now, from not only the effects of the drugs he'd pumped into her but also with pure fear that he may be telling her the truth; that this good man could never lie to her in the way of that impossible version in her mind. "Zanh Liis O'Sullivan. Starfleet serial number zero seven one one nine zero five. Rank: Captain. Command: USS Serendipity NCC two zero one two!"
"You're not making this any easier on yourself," he sighed with mock concern deliberately made louder to cover his joy. He was thinking all the while that she might be so fragile now that his work here may already be done.
Still, he was unwilling to even chance that any shred of her mind could be left intact and therefore able to be rehabilitated later. He knew he had to push her now- so far beyond her limits that there was no chance she could do anything but break. He had to destroy her for good.
"If Keiran was alive, if he were married to you, how could I possibly have this?" he asked, as he held O'Sullivan's ring out for her to see.
The moment she saw the light bounce off of the metal she lunged at him; crying out like a wounded animal and tearing the ring from his grasp.
"It's not real. You...you,” she raised an unsteady hand and pointed at him in accusation. “You replicated it!"
"I assure you it's the real thing. Look." He took out a medical tricorder and ran it over the ring. "It's registering that it has traces of his DNA still on the metal. See?" He waved the tricorder at her half-heartedly, not really allowing her to see the results but knowing she would have seen enough.
He put a sober expression across his features as he lowered his voice. "It's probably his blood. They took the ring off of him, the crew of the Perseids, to prove to you after they got back that he was really gone."
"Liar,” Liis spat, almost uplifted she was so very relieved to finally see some small hope. “Keiran left it for me. Before he went on that Jump."
"Not this time, he didn't,” Brody protested as if so strongly wishing that for her own good she’d just try to understand. “This is the timeline you have refused to remember, Zanh Liis."
To her horror it all made sense, and losing that hope took away far more from her that it’d given. So a very pleased Brody watched the vacancy settle over her eyes, draining the remaining life from her face as her form slid down the wall, wilting to the ground. "This is the time that is real."
Her hands went limp and the ring fell to the ground with a clatter. She dropped her head into her hands, beginning to recite once again her vital statistics as found in her official record.
Brody leaned down and picked up the ring, as he gave her a moment to work herself up into an even deeper level of panic. This was really almost too easy; she was doing most of the work of destroying herself for him.
Distracted from her pain for only a moment he examined the ring, and his eye caught something on the interior of the band that he had not seen before; something that had not been there the last time he'd examined it closely.
This tiny detail in the form of an inscription would have to be removed before he let her look at the ring again to finish this; if she saw the stardate that Keiran had added to it alongside the original date of their marriage in the alternate line, then she may find some small foothold for sanity to keep her standing against the fiction he was feeding to her.
Brody hastily tucked the ring back into his jacket.
"I will leave you alone for awhile." He moved toward the door with his eyes never deviating from her delicious suffering. "I'll be back, Zanh Liis. Then we're going to have to talk seriously about the fact that you're not getting better. You're getting worse. We may need to begin exploring other, less pleasant forms of therapy."
Once more Liis ignored him, lost to all the world as she retreated into her own mind; her body shaking violently as she desperately tried to understand what if anything around her was still real.
Her fingers moved to touch the empty spot on her left hand where she had believed her wedding rings should have been. She closed her eyes, whispering a heartbroken, one word plea for help aloud in the form of a name.
“Keiran.”
-=/\=-
Brody’s heart sped up as the doors to the holosuite closed behind him.
The thrill of watching her suffer was almost too much to pull away from, even momentarily. Still, he knew that there were other, more pressing demands upon his time that must be handled. Once those loose ends were secured then he would tie them all into the noose that would hang William Lindsay and any who’d try to help him.
After he was certain that goal was in sight, then he could return to the room he’d just left and finish off the very last of the empty shell he’d left within; the ghostly living remains of the woman once known as Zanh Liis.
His combadge chirped, requesting his attention.
[Peterson to Brody. The bridge is secured.]
Brody’s steps quickened as he made a straight path back to the lift. He issued a clear, simple command as he forced himself to suppress a satisfied smile.
Everything was coming together just as he had so many times imagined.
He answered Peterson’s declaration with a simple response. “Stand by for further instructions.”
Captain William Lindsay
Interim Director
The Department of Temporal Investigations
and
-=/\=-Zanh Liis O'Sullivan
Captive
Aboard the USS Poseidon
Interim Director
The Department of Temporal Investigations
and
-=/\=-Zanh Liis O'Sullivan
Captive
Aboard the USS Poseidon